They said, "The earliest human civilizations on earth first created celebrations such as the ones we have today as a way to keep people's spirits up during the darkest and coldest time of the year. This can be a dark time of year for some of the students that attend here, so like our ancestors before us, we use the exchange of gifts to bring joy to them."

There wasn't a single critical comment on the column, so let's assume nobody took it as another battle in the fictional war on Christmas.

This is, literally, the darkest time of year, when we have the winter solstice, the longest night and shortest day of the year. It's a science kind of thing, and it's been recognized for millennia by people sure they were seeing a yearly miracle.

It happened Sunday, Dec. 21, 2008, at 3:04 AM PT when the sun was at its most southerly position from our constantly moving planet. Winter began in the Northern Hemisphere and summer in the Southern Hemisphere. That's all. Between Wednesday, as I write this, and Sunday we'll gain a full minute of daylight.

A minute doesn't sound like much but it's worth celebrating, because it's a start on longer days, and the spring miracle. Don't you feel better already?

The ground will get warmer, planting time will come,we'll all get out of our caves, spend more time under those precious rays and start recovering from the Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) that sends us grumping off for long naps or snapping at our loved ones.

Is it worth fighting over? No. Are there rules about how to celebrate? No. At least, not for those of good will. Except this: all over the world, whatever it's called, it's also a festival of light.

So lighten up, OK?

Sophie Annan Jensen is a retired journalist. She lives in Lucerne.

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While most of my time was spent in built-up tourista areas, I did get to do a fair amount of driving around and got to see some of the poorer and more rural areas as well, and was surprised by what I observed everywhere I went.

Of course there were the loud-mouth drunk American tourists to keep one's national pride in check, but the thing that was truly humbling as a gringo was what the locals were doing.

Probably the most obvious example was the condition of the roads; even in the most humble neighborhoods the pavement was better than almost ANY street in Lakeport, and nowhere were the roadways as crude as they are in the city of Clearlake.

The reason was apparent everywhere I went, as road construction/repair was taking place all over the place. Mexico has obviously decided that good roads mean safe travels and good jobs for lots of people, and they are investing heavily in this aspect of their infrastructure.

It was also obvious that the building boom bust had not yet affected Mexico, as all sorts of structures were being erected – homes, businesses and government buildings, too. Signs of prosperity were everywhere, and there were no signs of some of our social problems, which had even more impact on me than it did on my last visit many years ago when it was not too uncommon to see children working.

There were no homeless people panhandling or stumbling around drunk in the parks, unlike my hometown of San Francisco, where the crazies, drunks and druggies roam the streets in annoying and sometimes frightening groups with barely any attempts to redirect their behavior.

Then there was the garbage issue, or to be more precise, the lack of it. Poor neighborhood, tourist zone or rural highways were all the same, they were trash-free.

I'm not sure if this is because an army of workers are employed to pick up roadside refuse or if people just don't throw so much stuff out the window of their cars, but whatever the reason for it the lack of misplaced garbage it made me think of the litter-choked ditches and roadsides around here, and how even when they are picked up a week later they're a mess again in some places, I have a hard time just keeping up with my trash problem generated by the one-third of a mile of county road that bisects my property.

Not only were the roadsides trash-free, but everywhere I saw a public garbage can in Mexico it was divided into two sides, organic and non-organic halves. Apparently Mexicans are more concerned with recycling than Americans, and are making the effort to sort all the trash they can into groups that can help keep landfills from getting used and again, keep people employed while preserving natural resources.

So I kept wondering, why can't we do some of these things? Are Americans too dumb or lazy to sort garbage? It does take a couple of seconds to read the signs that tell you what goes where, plus a bit of eye-hand coordination to get it there, can that be beyond us?

Haven't we been playing games by postponing road repairs for too long, and now the problem is so big it seems almost hopeless to try to get caught up?

Should we settle for roads that are unacceptable in third world countries, and continue to spend the nation's wealth on B-2 bombers and wars in far-off places that never threatened us?

If Mexico can keep crazy people off the streets and stop lazy people and drunks from annoying the rest of the citizenry then why can't we?

This isn't how you show leadership, it's time to pull our heads out of the sand folks, unless we want to become another Britain in our lifetimes.

Philip Murphy lives in Finley.

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Let me begin by once again saying that I have a vested interest in the financial success of this city. As a local business owner who has, like some other professionals, trouble recruiting practitioners into rural practice, I am in favor of development. But, I really want to see it be healthy growth, not urban sprawl that paves a 292-acre piece of paradise and makes it into another densely populated golf community.

This is the most awesomely beautiful big chunk of land in the city! Go out to the end of Dam Road or boat down the creek and have a look for yourself! Besides, we need to encourage more development of the “inner city.” We still have many empty lots and right now quite a few empty houses. It’s time to think sustainable. I know it’s an overused word, but it really gets to the heart of the matter. If we and our children are to have future, we need to use it and implement it.

On June 5, 2005, in San Francisco, a conference began when Gov. Schwarzenegger and participating mayors of 60 cities around the world signed an environmental action plan to reduce the state’s emissions of greenhouse gases, the Urban Environmental Accords.

These leaders, recognizing the need for critical change decided upon the following actions among others:

1. Adopt urban planning principles and practices that advance higher density, mixed use, walkable, bikeable and disabled-accessible neighborhoods which coordinate land use and transportation with open space systems for recreation and ecological restoration.

2. Adopt a policy or implement a program that creates environmentally beneficial jobs in slums and/or low-income neighborhoods.

3. Pass legislation that protects critical habitat corridors and other key habitat.

You can see the whole accords if you “Google” it. And while you're at it, have a look at www.sfenvironment.org, www.citymayors.com/environment/environment_day.html and www.coolcities.us/.

The Provinsalia project doesn’t quite fit this picture. It’s old hat. It’s using the allure of a fading fashion and deeply embedded in the box. It’s time to embrace the new ideal that will make us a prime tourist destination and a model of cool cities, keep our air clean and our stars visible, and make us proud of ourselves!

So, here’s my idea. Let’s turn it into an eco-destination. There can be accommodations that suit the eco-traveler, concessions, activities, education. Look how many long-term jobs that would create.

You know, Mr. Price, maybe your bosses would like the idea. It could make them lots of money and provide them with an excellent place for their meetings and family getaways. I hear you’ve been seen enjoying the place with your family.

Remember, the property is owned by multimillion dollar developers who don’t even live in this country, let alone this county. How much do they care about us except as a means to their financial ends?

We citizens of Clearlake need to direct our growth in a way that will honor the beauty of the place in which we live. We don’t want to keep others from enjoying the paradise we’ve found but we do want to keep it beautiful, don’t we?

If you agree, please let your thoughts be known. Visit, write or e-mail our planning commissioners and City Council members right away.

Debi Sally lives in Clearlake.

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Encouraged by Dale Neiman, Clearlake's ordinarily astute city administrator, the commissioners concluded that this smoke-and-mirrors project would miraculously solve the city's fiscal dilemmas and provide badly needed infrastructure.

To achieve those goals they are apparently willing to disregard the many "significant and unavoidable" environmental impacts detailed in the environmental impact report, sacrifice an amazing pristine site that could become a treasure to the city second only to the lake itself, distort their own general plan, skate on the thin ice of California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) legal violations, and encumber Clearlake with a a viper's nest of future problems.

Let's have a little reality check.

This unimaginative, badly designed project takes hardly any advantage of the special qualities of the site, which lies just outside the Cache Creek Wilderness and borders the creek itself for more than a mile, but relies instead on a second-rate, money-losing nine-hole golf course to sell jammed-together houses on minimally-sized lots.

This is a pattern of development that was obsolescent a decade ago. Even during the heady days of our recent real estate bubble, a subdivision like this would attract few of the affluent buyers whose theoretically plump and open wallets are being advertised as one of the benefits Provinsalia would bring to a demographically challenged city.

To make this subdivision even less attractive to potential buyers, the lots would be burdened with the excessive costs of sprawl. Extending infrastructure to a site remote from public services would require substantial new water treatment facilities, a sewer upgrade estimated to cost a minimum of $13 million and a completely new access road for which no budget has yet been provided, quite aside from the streets, gas lines, electric lines, recreational facilities and other infrastructure on the project site itself.

Some of these costs would be reflected in the purchase price of the lots, and others carried as permanent maintenance district fees assessed on residents. Collectively, these charges would put Provinsalia at a hopeless competitive disadvantage compared to residential properties elsewhere in Clearlake and in other parts of Lake County.

To make matters worse, the parlous state of the American economy has led to an extraordinarily tight credit market and a wave of foreclosures that is not expected to crest any time soon. Many of Provinsalia's potential customers – affluent retirees from the Bay Area – currently own houses that have decreased drastically in value, with no purchasers in sight. The few who still intend to relocate to our community can find a plethora of attractive homes available at fire sale prices in Hidden Valley and elsewhere in the county, leaving them with no incentive whatsoever to pay a large premium for a less desirable property in Provinsalia.

The conclusion seems obvious to anyone whose judgment has not been clouded by a haze of imaginary dollar signs: Provinsalia will never be built, and the project site will become the latest example of Lake County's many paper subdivisions.

As long as regulations preventing grading, tree-cutting and other on-site environmental degradation are properly enforced, this end result would ordinarily be of little consequence. The temporary maps would lapse after a few years, the developers would figure out some way to write off their losses and the whole episode would become a footnote to Clearlake's history.

But in this case project approvals have been structured in a way that would result in long-term distortion of the city’s general plan, its “constitution” governing growth: even if this project is abandoned, any deviation from the tiresome design outlined in the 70-page specific plan would require a subsequent general plan amendment and full CEQA review.

Not even such a minor alteration as the repeatedly suggested alternative design replacing the golf course with a more natural rural landscape incorporating hiking, biking, and equestrian trails would be possible without amending the general plan, much less anything like the innovative "eco-destination" suggested in Debi Sally's LakeCoNews letter of Dec. 10 (http://lakeconews.com/content/view/6599/770/).

Clearlake residents whose sanity remains unclouded should act now to keep this planning albatross from being hung around the neck of a city that has more than enough problems already. Please contact Mayor Chuck Leonard and Councilors Judy Thein, Joyce Overton, Curt Giambruno, and Roy Simon and urge them to reject this misguided and ultimately destructive project.

Victoria Brandon is chair of the Sierra Club Lake Group.

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Many Americans seem to have bought into the idea that the US is a democracy. That myth has been pulled out to use at various times, mostly for political gain, but the reality is that we have never been a democracy.

The idealists who founded this country were just as divided in their ideals as we are today. They realized that to simply allow the current “dominant voice” among the people to formulate laws and direct government would surely lead to a fragmentation of unity and the ultimate dissolution of the Union.

Our republican system of government, balanced by judicial oversight, was carefully structured by the Founding Fathers to guard against a simple majority determining our course and our laws. They recognized that the fickle populace, driven by emotion and righteous indignation, could be swayed to pass any number of unreasonable laws, by majority consent, which would infringe on the rights of others.

That’s the reason they put together the document we call the Constitution. Those are the guiding principles (not always enforced and twisted whenever possible) that protect America from itself. We have had presidents who ignored Supreme Court decisions and acted unilaterally to achieve the privilege of executive power — Jackson’s decision to remove the Cherokees — but generally we have pretended to be governed by the rule of law.

America is not one color, one religion or one creed — it is supposed to be every citizen together. We are as compelled to protect the rights of those we disagree with as fervently as those singing to our choir. The reason for this is that even those racist, deist and revolutionary thinkers who put this country together understood that majorities can be just as totalitarian as governments. Achieving religious, cultural or moral supremacy are the typical driving culprits behind depriving peoples of those “inalienable rights” we read about in school. The Constitution was intentionally made difficult to change because “the whims of the people” were not deemed by the Founding Fathers to be stable enough to uphold the Bill of Rights.

The majority does not rule in America, the Constitution does — or it should. That’s why we have “Supreme” Courts. They have the duty to point out when the populace is becoming unreasonable, pushing their values and mores on others for no other purpose than to bolster their own failing institutions and socio-political control. Of course, even the courts have proved themselves subject to agendas and politics, but the Supreme Court has managed to stay somewhat above the fray — maybe.

Not all Americans have benefited from constitutional or court protection in our checkered history, but as we move forward in time, the promise of what America can become is much greater than the mystical, misrepresented and over-glorified realities of our past. The greatness of America is in our yet-to-be-realized potential—and while that potential is there, we are obliged – in our own time – to reach for it. I have heard some argue that “state’s rights” should supersede federal law however at present that is not the prevailing priority, as evidenced by the difference between state and federal cannabis legislation.

So anytime someone says that “the voice of the people” is greater than the law, as defined by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and as interpreted by the US and state Supreme Courts — who are challenged to protect and uphold the Constitution from every enemy, foreign AND domestic — we should jump up and protest! Otherwise, “might” will continue to make “right” and the loudest voice or biggest gun will always control our lives.

James BlueWolf lives in Nice.

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Jupiter, Venus and a crescent moon, photographed Monday evening by Harold LaBonte.

Some times in space and time – in this particular and amazing Universe – in a small insignificant corner of our awesome and magnificent Milky Way galaxy – in our Solar system with our light and life giving SUNstar ...

The beautiful slooooooowly ever-orbiting and dancing planets above our daily too-busy lives puts on a grand, unique and attractive beautiful sky show by joining closer together to catch our attentions to remind us that we are all Children of the Universe.

We saw tonight’s so rare, lovely and quietly spectacular joining of three heavenly bodies – just for you and me – on this clear and precious quiet evening, giving us a rare chance to stop our busy and distracting Earthly lives, for just a few inspiring moments, to look up at the joining of the crescent Moon and Jupiter and brilliant Venus … Reminding all in the world that we all live, love, laugh, cry and die under the same moon, planets and SUNstar.

As I walked out from my observatory office on this dark and so clear eve. I too looked up, and was re filled with awe and respect – as I saw this beautiful conjunction of planets and moon. I was so moved and reminded that we all are Children of the Universe and each able to – each new day as SUNstar comes up in the east – trust that we have a new dawn and a new chance each day – to be "response able" to choose beyond fear, anger and greed to choose light, love, peace and respect of each other and our homeworld – always and all ways …

Victor Stryker is an astronomer with the Taylor Observatory and Norton Planetarium in Kelseyville.

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